NOTE: DEDICATED TO REFERENCING THE PECCADILLOES AS WELL AS THE BENEFITS VIS-A-VIS THE ENTERPRISES OF PEOPLE, INSTITUTIONS, THE MEDIA, RELIGIONISTS, AND GOVERNMENT, RECOGNIZING THAT MY FEET, TOO, ARE MADE OF CLAY AND PREPARED FOR THE ACCUSATION THAT MY HEAD IS FILLED WITH IT, BUT REVELING IN THE FACT THAT IN THE U.S. FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS GUARANTEED EVEN TO THE “LEAST OF THESE,” MEANING ME. Check out new collection: "AVENGED & Other Poems."

Friday, December 21, 2007

H-L Editorialist Debases Legislators

The editorialists at the Lexington Herald-Leader apparently had their collective knickers in a bind of enormous proportions for the 19 December issue in which they took profound exception to the pre-filing of a bill by two democratic (gasp and three palpitations) legislators to nullify the action by the trustees of both the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky to grant perks to non-families, both homosexually and heterosexually structured, which the state Constitution unmistakably bans.

As a reason for the wrongness of their action, the editorialist suggested that neither of the men represented a district that included an institution offering those benefits, thus apparently making them ineligible for taking such a drastic action.One wonders how people get to the position of editorializing in the light of a statement like that.Based on that thinking, the only legislators who could raise such a stink would have to be those representing Fayette and Jefferson Counties.Okay…it’s hard for any reasonable person to believe that, so folks are invited to bring up the editorial and see for themselves.

The editorialist did not then proceed to explain why these men are wrong and why their bill has no legal standing or how the attorney general has explained their mistake, if any.Instead, he/she/maybe-it took the opportunity to unload both barrels at the districts the two men represent, making them appear to be on roughly the level of zoos and among the state’s most profligate counties, presumably because these representatives are so bereft of redeeming virtues that they have caused their counties to degenerate to dismal levels.

So…the statistic-game was then introduced to discredit any claim these guys might have to present a bill about most anything.The numbers accruing to median-household income in eastern Kentucky are always good for a slam, so they were introduced…wonderful damnation of such poverty not corrected by the honorables Henderson and Smith.Then, the old children-living-in-poverty figures were trotted out, as well as those pertaining to families-under-poverty-level status and even the teen birth-rates, presumably due to dereliction of duty on the part of the legislators, who apparently are guilty of malfeasance or misfeasance or some other feasance in not handing out enough condoms to the girls or shotguns to their fathers in the interest of making those hormone-driven shack-ups make each-other honest.

Following this thorough abasing of the districts represented by the honorables Henderson and Smith – implicitly blaming them for every bad thing – was the by-now terribly tired line that the universities simply must regurgitate these perks upon homosexuals and heterosexual shack-ups in order to snare the “brightest and the best” to teach the state’s young people.Having little enough sense to engage in unsanitary, perverted, disease-prone homosexual behavior seems, actually, to disqualify the homosexuals and offer the wrong example to the students, who will quickly understand who is what.Or, having so little sense of commitment that they prefer to satisfy sex while not having to be responsible to each other for it seems to disqualify the heterosexual folks engaging that lifestyle.That’s the wrong example.

The bottom line, of course, is that these legislators represent taxpayers, all of whom have a stake in what happens to state money, especially since all state workers are entitled to the same perks as those employed at the universities and will at some point demand the same treatment.The current AG has failed to do his job, and the incoming AG has already made it plain that he won’t, either.The defining factor does not lie in legislative action, anyway, but in the simple enforcement of the Constitution, the thwarting of which Governor Beshear has already approved in this matter, as well.

About Me

I'm just an old guy who's been watching the scene for quite a long while, having come along just in time for the Great Depression. Those who are unfamiliar with that term are welcome to look it up. Though not scholarly by nature, I still managed to finish college (though not in four years or even five) and have been fortunate in getting to engage in a diversity of occupations - construction/farm laborer, U.S. Navy, newspaper sportswriter and columnist, radio disk-jockey and sportscaster, schoolteacher, full-time "church worker," railroader - and so I've had the opportunity to see things from both the white- and blue-collar perspectives, as well as those of the sacred and secular. Reading, writing, and music are my passions. The most intensive of my passions, however, is reserved for the writing of hymns.